1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a reactor integrating reaction device having different operating temperatures such as a vaporizer, a reformer, a CO remover and the like, each used for a fuel cell device.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, it has begun to apply a fuel cell using hydrogen as a fuel to motorcars, portable equipment and the like as a clean power source having a high energy conversion efficiency. The fuel cell is a device of directly taking out electric energy from chemical energy by electrochemically reacting a fuel with atmospheric oxygen.
Although hydrogen can be listed as a fuel used for the fuel cell, it has a problem of handling and storing owing to being a gas at a room temperature. In case of using a liquid fuel such as alcohols and gasoline, a vaporizer to vaporize the liquid fuel, a reformer to extract hydrogen required for electric power generation by reacting the liquid fuel with high temperature steam, a CO remover to remove carbon monoxide, which is a by-product of a reforming reaction (for example, refer to JP-2002-356310A).
In a reactor equipped with a vaporizer, a reformer and a CO remover, in order to install the fuel cell in a small electronic device, there is a temperature difference between the proper operating temperature of the vaporizer and the CO remover, which is about 200° C. or less, and the proper operating temperature of the reformer which is about 250° C. or more. Accordingly, in order not to raise the temperatures of the vaporizer and the CO remover over the operating temperature range owing to the propagation of the heat of the reformer, these relatively low temperature reaction furnaces are required to separate from the relatively high temperature reaction furnace, i.e., the reformer, by a sufficiently long distance. However, such a long distance separation has been a miniaturization constraint for the whole reactor. If the miniaturized installation is impossible for such a reason, then heat capacity becomes excessively large, and it is necessary to decrease the heat loss of the whole reactor for improving the energy efficiency.